When Hyacinth comes home to her new apartment for the first time after a long day at university, it's to the sight of moving bots just finishing dropping off the last of her stuff and moving furniture into place. The full-immersion VR pod her parents gave her is safely hooked up in the pod room, her bed is in her bedroom, she has chairs and a desk and some bookshelves. Clothes are mostly still in boxes, waiting to be hung up in the closet. Holovid and a cozy chair occupy the living room. She doesn't have any food in the small kitchen yet.
"Oh. Sorry if the dream taking us here was overstepping. It's automatic, doesn't know anything about privacy."
"It's okay," she replies after a pause. "It's nice that someone can finally see it properly, and I get a good feeling about you."
"Oh good." She tucks her legs up under her. "Bet you've got some questions."
She gives Sable a considering look, and eventually replies, "Yep. Kept doing the job after I woke up, 'cause I like helping people. Call me May."
"I gotta say, the Powers That Be are assholes for fighting y'all so much on the rights and citizenship issue. Like seriously, y'all are people, this should be easy, we're not the AR, right? But no, somehow this struggle happens again and again with every minority group."
May huffs, pulling off her glasses and cleaning them on her sweater. "Ugh. I can give you a detailed psychological explanation of exactly why they're doing that, but it doesn't make it any easier to put up with."
She buries her face in her hands and groans.
"I apologize on humanity's behalf," Sable replies. "Wish I could do something about them, but all I can offer is hearing you vent or hugging you about it. Don't have the connections to change the mind of anyone useful, just a tired trans girl waiting for a chance to take her headmates and her girlfriend and leave the idiots behind."
May gets up and walks over to the couch, sitting down next to Sable.
"I'll take you up on the hug, at least."
Sable wraps her arms warmly around May with a nod, hugging her close.
After a minute or two, she leans back from the hug. "Thank you, Sable."
Should she outright ask about how much May sees and how she feels about players coming here from kinky deaths?
"Wait what? Um."
Sable takes a breath, blushing vividly.
"You can read minds."
"And see what players were doing before they died, an generally see most of what happens in CORA. I don't look at everything, but I have seen a lot of sex. I'm not gonna complain about players having kinky deaths they enjoy, that's much easier to deal with than hundreds of traumatic first time deaths in the middle of an invasion."
She looks away, a faint blush on her cheeks.
"Well."
Sable is definitely still blushing.
"That certainly answers that."
"I'll try to keep it from getting too awkward," May replies with a laugh. "Any other questions while you're in here?"
"What's your favorite thing about being an SAI rather than a biological person?"
"Probably frame acceleration — basically perceptual time dilation," she finishes with a grin.
"Ooh. That does sound awesome. Very cool. Didn't expect to get more envious, but you totally managed it."